Field trips February and early April 2015

Sunday, February 15, 2:00 pm, MacDonald Fire Road in Chabot Regional ParkMeet at the MacDonald Staging Area on Redwood Road in Chabot Regional Park. (Take Highway 13 south to Redwood Road exit, turn left onto Redwood Road after exiting, go over the hill. The MacDonald Staging Area is on the right about one mile into the valley. If you come to the entrance to Redwood Regional Park on the left or to Pinehurst Road, you have gone too far. It is still early for flowers, but some are in bloom as are shrubs and trees. We will look for western leatherwood, which is in flower and visible off trail through the bare branches of other shrubs. And we will see what else is in bloom or starting. An uphill walk but not too strenuous. Meet at 2:00 pm. (We are walking south/southeast towards Castro Valley, so if you are late, just catch up.) Trip leader: David Margolies (divaricatum@gmail.com, 510-393-1858).Saturday, April 4, field trip to Brooks Island. Reservations due March 30 John Kipping will lead this field trip via Dolphin Charters to Brooks Island in San Francisco Bay, opposite the Richmond shoreline. East Bay Regional Parks provides only limited visitor access, and 22 visitors is maximum enrollment for this trip. The trip fee is $72.00, and participants should call the reservations line (888-327-2757) with the East Bay Regional Park “course code” of 9076. Do not call the California Native Plant Society because we cannot reserve a spot for you–only EBRP reservations can do that.

Human occupation of Brooks Island goes back about 3000 years to Native American use of this 47-acre island. Since then, the island was a family homestead known as Sheep Island, then used as rock quarry, and finally as the Sheep Island Gun Club before park acquisition. Bring lunch, water, and plant keys and be ready for getting in and out of the Zodiac to land on the small dock.

Above: Janet Gawthrop explains. Below: a five finger fern. Photos taken by Phred Jackson on an EBCNPS field trip in Tilden Regional Park on November 28, Buy Nothing Day. During the winter they close off South Park Drive across from the UC Botanical Garden to protect the newts’ annual crossing. Read more about the hike at http://tinyurl.com/kx4hyxs